"Evernight Academy: an exclusive boarding school for the most beautiful, dangerous students of all - vampires. Bianca, born to two vampires, has always been told her destiny is to become one of them. But Bianca fell in love with Lucas - a vampire hunter sworn to destroy her kind. They were torn apart when his true identity was revealed, forcing him to flee the school.Although they may be separated, Bianca and Lucas will not give each other up. She will risk anything for the chance to see him again, even if it means coming face-to-face with the vampire hunters of Black Cross - or deceiving the powerful vampires of Evernight. Bianca's secrets will force her to live a life of lies."Yet Bianca isn't the only one keeping secrets. When Evernight is attacked by an evil force that seems to target her, she discovers the truth she thought she knew is only the beginning…"
Summary
Stargazer is the second outing for Lucas and Bianca the young star-crossed lovers of Claudia Gray’s Evernight series. Written for the YA market, the Evernight series has all the right ingredients to be a hit with its target audience – vampires, vampire hunters and seemingly doomed first love. Gray writes confidently in Stargazer, delivering a well constructed story that builds upon the strengths of Evernight, her debut novel. These books really need to be read in order so if you haven’t read Evernight yet stop reading this review here (now!) because there be spoilers…
Stargazer begins at the start of a second school year for Bianca at the vampire-run Evernight Academy. Bianca’s first year was somewhat eventful. She found her true love in the form of Lucas, a fellow Evernight pupil. Unfortunately for Bianca, he turned out to hiding an important secret – namely that he was a Black Cross vampire hunter who had secretly infiltrated the school to spy on its vampire teachers and students. This was unfortunate for Bianca for two reasons – firstly because she is the living vampire child born of two vampire parents and secondly because once his secret identity was discovered he had to leave Evernight Academy in a dramatic style and their love became forbidden.
Lucas not being allowed anywhere near the Academy grounds does put something of a crimp in his continuing (now secret) romance with Bianca but where there is a will, young love can certainly find a way, and soon Lucas and Bianca set up secret meetings off campus. The absence of Lucas from most of the story leaves a bit of a gap where romantic relationship development would usually be and sometimes, as a reader, it’s hard to remember exactly why Lucas is the love of Bianca’s life. Yes, he has all the attractions that go with a forbidden lover, a powerful lure for any girl let alone a sheltered vampire child in the flush of first love, but his noticeable absence from the majority of the story means that their relationship stagnates during the course of this book. Over the duration of Stargazer Bianca spends a lot of time with a fellow vampire student Balthazar, and their conflicted relationship – neither of them being the one the other truly wants – was of much greater interest to me than the main feature.
Creepy mystery and drama are added to Stargazer’s plotline in the form of increasingly dangerous ghosts that start to haunt the Evernight Academy. It isn’t long before Bianca uncovers/reveals another terrible truth about her heritage as a vampire child and this is done in the same way it was revealed that she was a vampire in Evernight – as the narrator she knows, has probably always known, but hasn’t revealed the secret to the reader and doesn’t until the drama is heightened to maximum level.
While romance in Stargazer maybe a little lacking the plotline is put to good alternative use revealing more about the vampire world. There are many original ideas in Gray’s vampire mythology – one of the most fascinating being that vampires who are turned at young human ages never fully grow-up. Change being impossible for them because they are dead and essentially can’t change or grow further. The idea behind Evernight Academy – that it is a place to give sanctuary and rehabilitation into modern-day life for ancient, yet young looking, vampires who have lost touch with the modern world – certainly sparks the imagination. Combined with dangerous ghosts, a sneaky murderous vampire and the constant intrigue that surrounds the undead inhabitants of Evernight Academy there is plenty of vamp-centric excitement in Stargazer for readers to enjoy.
Reception
Stargazer was listed as "The # 1 New York Times Bestseller". Seventeen magazine praised Claudia Gray's Stargazer writing: “If you like Twilight, this book has even more drama.”. Kirkus Reviews wrote critically of the book saying "Bianca’s tendency to belabor every point, particularly the depth of her love for Lucas, makes for a dull narrative style, and three-dimensional characters are pretty much nonexistent. Despite the predictable romantic entanglements and the constant telling, the plot races along with a search for a crazed renegade vampire, threatening ghosts, uncovered secrets and a flaming climax with a significant body count. Fans of the first volume will be satisfied; insufficient back story means no one else will know (or care) what is going on." Stargazer received a rating of 3.96 on Goodreads.com which is the highest rating of the series.
The review
"The first book in this four-book series was a surprisingly strong read for me. It was on the dramatic side and I had expected something that was simply a rehash of every vampire story I've ever read, but what I was most shocked about was that this book was fun. This series has the serious love and the heightened emotions that make up the most entertaining stories. With how much I enjoyed Evernight, I came into Stargazer with the expectations of meeting the same level of enjoyment, and the second book holds its own in the series as a whole. Gray has established herself with this and some strong short stories as a solid writer in my book. Her second book doesn't disappoint and makes the reader eager for the third installment.
Teens Bianca and Lucas met at Evernight Academy. Lucas was there for the first time, and Bianca's parents were establishing themselves as live-in professors like the rest of the educational staff. Boarding school was not looking strong for either of them, but one thing they did come to like about Evernight Academy was their relationship with each other. Bianca and Lucas fell in love the way starcrossed teenagers do, and it seemed like their relationship would be fairly normal until their reality started to unravel. Bianca, as well as a majority of Evernight's population, was a vampire. Lucas was a vampire hunter. Things did not go according to plan.
Now, Bianca and Lucas are still in love, but they are no longer together at good-old Evernight Academy. Lucas is stationed with the Black Cross, the most deadly and prominent of the vampire hunting groups, and is presumably far away from the goings on at Evernight Academy. Balthazar seems ready to pick up the pieces and take over where Lucas left off, but Bianca can only think of the older vampire as a brother. Balthazar has trouble accepting the fact that Bianca won't be his, but he can continue to hope as Lucas is out of the picture...or is he?
Evernight Academy has more in store for Bianca, Balthazar, and Lucas than they could have ever anticipated. As tension between the school for vampires and the Black Cross heats up, so does the tension between Bianca and her love interests. Bianca and Lucas find difficult ways to see each other, but the ultimate risk is worth it if it means being together. The family Lucas knows at the Black Cross still doesn't realize that the mysterious Bianca isn't a trapped human student at Evernight, and a ghostly apparition that begins showing itself at the school also spells bad tidings. Can Bianca and Lucas ever overcome the odds and be together, or is there more than just human/vampire tension that's keeping them apart?
Claudia Gray does a great job of keeping Bianca interesting and relative in this sequel. It had been about a year since I read Evernight, so my direct details of Bianca were fuzzy on the reading, but I easily slipped back into her narration as I started Stargazer. Gray does a great job of establishing who Bianca was when the last book left off and then moves on. Stargazer is a very important story in the series concerning separation between the protagonists. It helps strengthen their relationship, but at the same time it helps quell the feelings of insta-love that Bianca seemed to give off in Evernight. Bianca's a very likable character that is fun to read about because of the drama and stakes that she has going on in her life. She's very sneaky and willing to go big in order to get what she wants. It leads to her making some very teenage decisions. However, I find her realistic as a teenager in regards to the rash decision making, and when things are important she's willing to fight for herself and for what she loves. Bianca gets pulled in many directions because of the good people she sees in the Black Cross and the good vampires she sees at Evernight. The moral conundrum that Bianca faces is what really makes her stand out for me in this book. She faces this complex tug between the human and vampire sides, and the gray area that it actually is doesn't feel like an authorial tempt at a moral lesson for teenagers. Everyone is the same, stop with the misunderstandings! Bianca isn't afraid to question her beliefs, the people around her, and even Lucas and his beliefs. Gray makes her a really great character in that regard. Bianca is naturally suspicious and used to drama, and it allows her to show readers and herself that questioning is needed, even if it does make things more complex and difficult to deal with in the long run.
The characters that accompany Bianca in this volume really start to show themselves in terms of their complexity in the plot. Some of them are merely there as villains and plot-needed people, but Gray manages to make them feel like real characters instead of just plot devices. Balthazar is still just as rugged, sexy, and brooding as ever. It may seem odd that he isn't the love interest at first, but I love that Gray is able to show his complex friendship with Bianca and hint at the darker parts of his past in Stargazer. We as readers really get a stronger connection to what his character is supposed to have in terms of motivation. Lucas was still quite heroic in this volume, but Bianca's questioning of his issues regarding vampires is very welcome, and I liked that their relationship wasn't shown as something that was without internal struggles. Lucas is still on the "ridiculously perfect" side, but I have come to find him a good character despite the definition he seems to fit. Bianca's parents, Lucas's family, and some of the vampire students (new and old characters) return with a sense of strong place as well. Gray has a lot of side characters that I can remember (names non-withstanding - I'm bad at remembering names outside of the main characters) by personality and action, and I find that really great. These characters don't all have a lot of complexity beyond their place in the plot, but they all work together very well and leave a good enough impression on me that I remember their personalities and interactions with Bianca, Balthazar, and Lucas.
Gray's writing is really the biggest reason why I've come to find this series positively amazing. It's a style that incorporates a fair amount of description and word use without overusing either one, and it really encapsulates the drama and intrigue of the world. As a reader, I can also tell that Gray had fun writing this series. That is what makes it so fun to read. Gray's style sucks you in and gets you invested in the characters and story. Whenever she pulls out a new twist, the reader immediately gets a sense of heightened excitement. Gray knows how to take a book that in all reasoning should have been slow and make it fast paced by the way her style and the plot flow. She turned Bianca's drama and moral problems into something that could also be addressed with a plot and with actual events that go on. The middle books of series tend to focus so much on the character that they lose the sense of plotting, but Gray avoids that. Stargazer felt fast and well-paced despite the higher focus on Bianca's struggles compared to the previous book. Ultimately, the style is just something that is infinitely entertaining with this story. Gray's won me over with it, and I've since come to enjoy the various short stories I've read from her because of it. (In case you were wondering, she writes a really solid short story as well.)
I can't be happier with the progress in Claudia Gray's series. I know it's completed now (at four books) with a spin-off novel coming out in 2012 based on Balthazar (heck yes), and I aim to finish reading it in time for the spin-off. Gray's writing is fabulous, and I always find it satisfying without losing the entertainment value it holds. Gray really captures the readers emotions and gives them a story high in drama, characterization, and pure romantic fun. It's got its share of angst and love-interest-confusion, but Gray makes it stand out with her voice and the ability to twist cliches into things that benefit the overall plot and the characters within it. For anyone that wants to read a solid paranormal series for the YA set, I have to turn them towards this series. It has its faults - and its vampires, which are as much a deterrent as a selling point these days - but I love it and that love only gets stronger as I read through it.Cover: I really love these covers, although the similarities to the first book in terms of how the face is positioned and what-not make it dull. I like that the style is uniform, though, and it's an appealing uniformity."
No comments:
Post a Comment